The present invention relates to an apparatus for processing floating-point data having exponents of a variable length.
The format of the floating-point data having exponents of variable length to be processed by the present invention is known in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 59-11444 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,641. In order to process such floating-point data, it is necessary to separate the exponents and the mantissa from the data before processing and to generate floating-point data having exponents of variable length by combining the exponent and mantissa data both of fixed length obtained as a result of the processing.
In the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,641, however, the separating and combining processings are executed in a bit-serial manner which results in a lower processing rate.